A Sermon on Identity for Christ the King 2021

Sermon on John 18:33-37 for Christ the King, Sunday November 21^st 2021.

I have a friend called Ruth who is a curate down in Oxfordshire. She trained at the same theology college as me. She told me a story that really made me laugh, because it summed up how kind she is, and also how she’s the type of person that stuff just happens to. 

She joined a new group at the church she was working at and for some reason the lady who introduced her to the rest of the group got her name wrong and introduced her to everyone as Sue. Ruth was too polite and kind to tell them that her name wasn’t Sue and the longer this went on the harder it became to tell them that she was actually Ruth and not Sue.

Mistaken identity isn’t always amusing, but lots of us have experienced it. The problem is, most of us, have many identities. 

If I go to the local primary school to pick my eight year old up, I am Mrs Manfredi or I’m Lorenzo’s mum. Stood up here in a church, wearing these robes, I assume the identity of a vicar or at least someone, who  - hopefully – knows something about God. You might even assume that I am more holy than you or a superior Christian. In Reverend Mike’s case I’m sure you’d be absolutely right. In mine, not so much. 

Next summer I will be ordained and most days I will wear a collar round my neck and there will be no escaping my new identity as an ordained minister in God’s church. People will assume things about my identity; some of it good, some of it bad. The expectations will be both gift and curse. Identity is a complex thing. 

I wonder what different identities you’ve had in your own life? Mother, wife, husband, father, teacher, manager, nurse, carer, friend, neighbour. 

Most of these are helpful place holders to describe who and what we are; they mark out the things that matter to us or the way we spend our time. They help to explain our place in the world and the roles that we play. 

We like identity, don’t we. We like to be clear about who is who and why they are who they say they are. We like it so much we have entire government departments to legally assign us with our identity and give us the documents to prove it. 

I have two teenagers and their peer group are really preoccupied with this question of identity. In unstable and rapidly changing times, these young people cling to their own identities as anchors in a stormy uncertain sea, desperately trying to pin down exactly who they are, because who we are matters and when we are young, who other people think we are, matters more than anything else. 

The problem is, we can’t always control how other people see us. Sometimes we have identities foisted upon us that are unhelpful, limiting or even harmful. We can scream internally that we are so much more than that, or “that’s not who I am inside!” but sometimes…sometimes all people see is a label and the label – the identity – is so very huge that we struggle to get people to see past it. 

Divorcee. Widower. Spinster. Unmarried mother. Disabled. Alcoholic. Immigrant. Criminal. 

As Christian people, our key identity is as a beloved child of God. That ought to be enough. It so often isn’t. So many of the identities given to us, are assigned by other people and we are forced to live with their expectations. 

In today’s gospel reading, Pontius Pilate is given a man to judge whom the High Priest says is a criminal. Pilate gives him another identity; he asks him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’

Pilate is the first person in the gospel of John to use this title for Jesus, in a gospel account that is determined to make Jesus’ identity clear to us. Throughout the gospel Jesus tells us who he is: I am the bread of life, he says. I am the one true vine. I am the gate. I am the good shepherd. I am the light of the world. I am the resurrection. I am the way, the truth and the light. 

And yet when Pilate says to him: Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus does not say, I am. He says ‘You say that I am.’ 

This short passage from John’s gospel is about kingship and identity: what is a king and what type of kingdom does this king rule over. It’s one of seven scenes of discourse in the passion narratives of John’s gospel. John loves the number 7 – he includes it in the opening to Revelation which we also heard this morning: A letter to the 7 churches in the province of Asia. There are also 7 “I Ams.”The number seven has religious significance to John; think of the 7 days of creation in the book of Genesis. It turns up a lot in his writings. 

This interrogation with Pilate is the first scene of seven in the story of how Jesus dies, and we all know how it ends: with Jesus lifted up high like a king, the crown on his head made of thorns not gold, while the soldiers mockingly chant ‘All hail the king of the Jews!’

On this day when we celebrate Christ the King, I want us to consider what it means when we attach this label, this kingly identity to Jesus. Is it an identity that Jesus chose for himself, or is it one that we, in our small, weak humanness, place upon him because we find it so hard to imagine his power and importance without lacing it with earthly majesty? 

Jesus says: ‘My kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is from another place.’

 Jesus is king, but not a king like we know it, and certainly not a king like how Pilate knew it. Pilate understood kingship in terms of power, might and majesty. To him a king was one who overthrows, subjugates and controls. Jesus’ identity of life, light and truth is so far beyond his understanding that he just doesn’t know what to make of this Jesus at all. 

People will always want to put us into the boxes that make the most sense to them. They will want to label you a Sue when really you’re a Ruth. They will want to decide your own identity for you or draw conclusions about you that might make you want to declare, like Jesus did, ‘You say that I am. But I know the truth about me.’ 

In short, people will continue to be people, but if our lord and saviour was content to allow others to label him – literally, above the cross that he died upon – with their description of his identity instead of his own, then we can be comforted by the knowledge that no matter what others say we are, God knows who we really are inside and that’s what matters most. 

We are God’s children. Fearfully and wonderfully made. Fully known. Fully understood. Completely loved. No matter how many other identities I assume throughout our lives, that is the only one that truly matters. That is who you are. That is who I am. Amen.